Wittertainment

Origins of the word, 'Wittertainment'

Being a regular podcaster of the Kermode and Mayo Film Review program on  BBC Radio 5, on 2nd February 2007, I created a page on Wikipedia which coined the word 'wittertainment' to describe the banter between Mayo and Kermode.

A short (2-minute) clip of the Kermode and Mayo discussing the word on the programme is available here. (For Witter-heads, it is from 14:50 to 16:40 in the actual Podcast from 2 Feb 2007).

The Wikipedia page content included the following:

"Wittertainment is a term inspired by the Good Doctor, Mark Kermode's film reviews on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio Five Live show.

Suggested usage: “Wittertainment at its most wittertaining”

In a nutshell, Kermode, the barrel-chested former Queen‘s guardsman is provoked into ranting by the urbane and erudite Mayo, a perfect foil for the discontemparily-coiffed Kermode. The ensuing witter is surprisingly entertaining. Kermode is undoubtedly a man of many words, a small few of which he unfortunately uses very often. These include, and indeed are exclusively limited to: Guillermo Del Toro, Ken Russell's wife, tertiary syphilis, and some movie called The Exocet, I think.

However, for dedicated pod-casters, Kermode and Mayo cause time to pass unnoticed, a not inconsiderable but much appreciated feat while driving in contemporary urban Ireland."

Unfortunately the Wikipedia custodians decided the page should not survive. Among the reasons offered was "Wittertainment is not a word – I couldn't find it on Google". My argument that it was not unreasonable to expect that a new word would not already exist, even on Google, failed to cut much ice, and the article was quickly deleted. Some discussion on the issue can be found here and here

There was also some interesting debate about whether Kermode was a former Queen's gardener rather than a Queen's guardsman. However this was just pure invention which I included to help ensure that it would be picked up by Kermode and Mayo, who in fact read the page out on the program on 2nd February 2007. In fact, the following week when the article had been deleted from Wikipedia, Kermode ranted that some academic should write a learned treatise on the word Wittertainment which would confer sufficient respectability to maintain its existence on Wikipedia.

Does this qualify?